Creating a feed syndication platform at Microsoft

Starting next week I will join Microsoft's Windows Live division to create a new product team around syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. I will help build a feed syndication platform leveraged by Microsoft products and developers all around the world. I am excited to construct a team and product from scratch focused on scalability and connecting syndication clients and their users wherever they may exist: desktop, mobile, media center, gaming console, widget, gadget, and more. Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Live.com will be...

Creating a feed syndication platform at Microsoft

Starting next week I will join Microsoft’s Windows Live division to create a new product team around syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. I will help build a feed syndication platform leveraged by Microsoft products and developers all around the world. I am excited to construct a team and product from scratch focused on scalability and connecting syndication clients and their users wherever they may exist: desktop, mobile, media center, gaming console, widget, gadget, and more.

Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Live.com will be the first feed syndication experience for hundreds of millions of users who would love to add more content to their page, connect with friends, and take control of the flow of information in ways geeks have for years. I do not believe we have even begun to tap into the power of feeds as a platform and the possibilities that exist if we mine this data, connect users, and add new layers of personalization and social sharing. These are just some of the reasons I am excited to build something new and continue to change how the world can access new information as it happens.

I’ll be working out of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus but hopefully there will be a new San Francisco office in the near future. I’ll be working closely with the Hotmail storage team to make sure the platform scales and with the MessageCast Windows Live Alerts team to make sure you can customize how you receive new content. Microsoft Research already has a few projects focused on the blogosphere as well as research into new search and social networking techniques. Windows Live is all about your info, your relationships, and discovering new things all in a seamless and secure experience. Oh so much fun, it’s just a matter of prioritizing and having a strong enough platform on the back-end to make it all possible.

I want RSS and Atom syndication technologies to be available anywhere, integrated as the background technology delivering new information when and where it matters most. Read your own personalized top news stories while waiting for the bus. Track your friends’ Halo results anywhere. Pull the latest information off the corporate intranet and into an authoring application. Load your own niche content channel into your DVR. Update the art on your walls. I geek out on this stuff and could go on and on.

I will continue to engage the community. There are some big challenges ahead for the entire syndication industry that are best solved by working together. There is a need for new shared metadata initiatives to describe rich media such as podcasts, videos and images. Some content publishers are holding back their content due to a lack of clear authentication and feed noindex options. The industry can gain a lot by having open dialogue and working groups around various issues in the space and I will continue to look outward for new ideas, partnerships, and best practices.

That is awesome! I don’t know if you remeber me, but I came to your house with my gf last year to play old-school Mike Tyson Punch-out. Anyway, I actually moved back to LA and now am at MSFT. Interestingly enough, when I saw you had left Technorati, I was going to contact you about openings at MSFT as you would of been perfect. Anyway good to hear that you are on board! I have to shoot you an email to your alias

Congrats on the job! Sounds like a great opportunity and good to see Microsoft picking up great talents.

There is a small SF Microsoft office (on Market near the Ferry building) but perhaps they need to expand it..

Hope you can make it to both Thursday’s SFWIN and to MeshForum in May – it would be great to have a bunch of people from Microsoft at MeshForum – our focus this year on visualization and on large scale social networks would, I think, be of interest to many groups within Microsoft.

Hmm…sunny California & lattes. But…don’t any of you want to work for Big Blue?!?! We invented all this decades ago…while walking 100 miles to work…barefoot…uphill…in the snow. Bah…(goes back to running airlines, banks, & Krispy Kreme). ;-)

I’d like to see Naill going to build a wonderful publishing platfarm instead of HTML. :)
New platfarm should include more things! How to subscribe P2P download seed(BitTorrent is popular in China)? How to discuss the same subject in any platfarm(Blog comment, IM chat, Email, even mobile phone SMS) ? Do you like feed contains your favorite TV program’s schedule and show them to your any device(TV,PC, Mobile phone) on time?